Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "IWrocker" channel.

  1. 6:00 As a Finn, I'd call -5 °C nearly optimal for downhill skiing, not "extreme cold". And this Unimog has been poorly maintained to start this poorly in -5 °C.
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  2.  @peter_althoff  4 men with luggage would if comfortably in Volvo C30.
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  3.  @neolerades2987  Average passanger car length in Europe was 4536 mm in 2023. That makes XC60 above average in length so it's not definitely "tiny". You're rigth that it isn't exactly huge either. I couldn't find any statistics for median car length but considering that there's minimum size to fit humans, it's pretty safe to assume that median length is even shorter than average length. (According to ChatGPT and iAsk the median length in Europe would be 4.1–4.4 meters and 4.5–4.9 meters in the USA, but as usual, it's pretty hard to say how accurate these numbers are.)
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  4. 6:40 The construction sites use high-vis signals because Finland is pretty dark half the year so everything must be clearly visible in the darkness during the snow storm in the middle of winter and during heavy rain in the late autumn. The yellow stuff is made out of highly reflective tape.
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  5. If I've understood correctly, EU legislation now requires all new cars to flash brake lights whenever the car is decelerating faster than a given limit which I think is close to 0.3 G.
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  6. Here in Finland, the driver uses active joystick for the side blow to clear up bus stops and similar extensions while driving past them on the road. The controls are fast enough to extend and pull back without slowing the truck down for the bus stop.
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  7. I agree. And make sure to check out Pasi ("Passari-Sisu"), the APC analog of Sisu. The most modern Pasi variants are Patria XA-202 and Patria XA-203. The next gen armored vehicle is Patria 6x6 which is part of CAVS Program joint development programme for Common Armoured Vehicle Systems, current members include Finland, Latvia, Sweden and Germany.
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  8.  @ra7en114  The only part that was nearly superhuman was that Grosjean didn't lose his consicousness because of crash. Had he been unconscious even for 25 seconds, he would have died in that crash because of the fire.
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  9. I think Skoda should be described as a VW counterpart for Seat vs Audi. (Note that all of those brands are owned by VAG.) Seat is basically a low budget version of Audi with tech that's about two years older than Audi. Skoda is basically a low budget version of VW with tech that's a couple of years older than the tech in VW cars. Some think that that's bad, I would argue that it's sensible to let other people to test new tech before deciding if you want to have long term relationship with that tech. The tech that is prone to fail in Audi/VW during first years is never even copied to Seat/Skoda. That said, you have to compare similar class cars for this to make sense. If you take top of the line Skoda Superb and compare it to baseline Golf, the Skoda will appear as the premium car.
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  10. If you drive in Finland during the winter, you definitely want Michelin, Continental or Nokian tires because the friction will be pretty low no matter how good your tires are, so any bit of extra traction is a huge bonus. I prefer studded variants but you can use the variant without studs if you really want.
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  11.  @mikcnmvedmsfonoteka  You can purchase arctic diesel here in Finland which works just fine down to -30 °C. And if you run something with VW TDI engine, if you can get the engine to start, the diesel pump will heat the fuel filter while the engine is running. And some models will even start to heat the fuel tank if you drive it for long enough.
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  12. The studs in these rally tires are sticking 7 mm outwards from the surface of the tire. Here in Finland, the max legal limit is 2 mm and that's for worn tires where the rubber has worn away but the stud is still there. For brand new tires, the legal limit is 1.2 mm so the studs are barely sticking out of the tire. This is the reason why studded winter tires will get better traction on ice when used a bit. And the longer studs are really important if there's some snow on top of the ice. Imagine situation where there's 5 mm worth of snow on ice. The rally tire can still grab the surface of the ice with studs, the street legal tire is fully floating on snow.
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  13. 21:40 EU nutrition facts label MUST include per 100 g or per 100 ml data so the packaging size doesn't matter when you compare the numbers.
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  14.  @sytricka3318  Cars with diesel engines simply need three things: good battery, working starter motor and fully working glow plugs. It's typically the last one that's broken because with modern direct injection engines you can typically get away with broken glow plugs until it's pretty cold outside.
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  15.  @neolerades2987  Yes, the difference in size isn't that huge but my point was that majority of all cars are smaller.
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  16. Be sure to check info about their Freevalve engine. It's nice tech but unfortunately too expensive for most roads cars. Gemera year 2020 model had 600 bhp 3-cylinder(!) internal combustion engine with Freevalve tech. That 3-cylinder engine is assisted by 3 electric motors for total power around 1700 bhp. There's also variant of Gemera with V8 internal combustion engine combined with electric motors having total power around 2300 bhp if you think 1700 is not enough for you and you can accept heavier vehicle. Engineering explained with titled "2,300 Horsepower - How Koenigsegg Gemera's Insane Powertrain Works!" has lots of interesting details about the drivetrain explained on whiteboard.
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  17. 5:20 Cars yielding to pedestrians are not courtesy in Europe. Here in Finland, if you don't yield on multilane road when another lane is yielding, that's instant loss of the driver's license for 3 months plus pretty heavy traffic ticket as a bonus.
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  18. 3:00 This is Golf Mk2 with diesel engine. The design is from year 1983 and there's no direct injection nor turbo here. And the behavior in this video is just an user error. While the yellow light is lit, you should wait with ignition turned on and start immediately then light goes off. This user is clearly trying to start while the yellow light is still lit. The VAG diesel engine from this era started really poorly if you didn't follow the right procedure (yes, I've driven for multiple years with such an engine).
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  19. The workload for the drivers is actually less than it used to be. Around 2015 the drivers were allowed to freely adjust engine fuel maps, too, and the drivers had to adjust the engine during the lap according to engineer instructions to extract max power without overheating the engine. And it had to be done by the driver using the buttons because of regulations.
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  20. 2:33 About half the glow plugs of this car are probably bad. It shouldn't run this poorly if it has working glow plugs and correct engine oil for the motor.
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  21. F1 cars also have ridiculously light flywheels to allow rapid RPM changes as requested by the driver. To get some idea about the throttle response of the engine, see this compilation of F1 engines playing music: https://youtu.be/y5opv-r9nZc The reason they play music with the engine is that they need to heat up the engine in any case with a computer controller warm up routine. Then some marketing people figured out that it would be cool to apply the throttle positions in the warm-up routine to match notes in music. Usually when you release throttle the RPM will more or less slowly decrease because flywheel keeps the engine running without fuel. With F1 engines the compression is high and flywheel is minimal so the RPM drops instantly.
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  22. Retired emergency vehicles are sold to public. The colors are typically just plastic tape and the underlying vehicle is typically pure white.
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  23. The weight of a vehicle doesn't matter for the braking distance as long as the road surface can cope with the forces and brakes are good enough.
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  24. Grosjean was also lucky enough that the barrier wasn't exactly at the exit hole of the cockpit. There is not enough space to get to the side under the halo so if the barrier had been directly above him then he would have burned alive because there would have been no way to get out of the cockpit without moving the car.
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  25. TL;DR: the worst European Fanta tasted much better than the best US Fanta.
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  26. 11:38 I think you might appreciate some hot hatchback like VW Golf GTI or Seat Leon Cupra.
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  27. 11:37 When the lights in the dash a flicker during engine start, the battery has gone bad. Don't ask how I know.
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  28. One thing worth mentioning is that teams are not allowed to copy aerodynamic parts from each other. Once a team comes on a track with some special shape e.g. for a wing, other teams cannot make their parts exactly similar. It's kind of like they automatically receive F1 wide patent for any form they show up with, at least for the ongoing season. I think copying last year designs is allowed.
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  29. I think most emergency vehicles in Finland have 3 different siren sounds and they select different depending on the situation. I think one is used near intersections and one is for the highways. However, there are no standardized sounds so every emergency vehicle sounds a bit different. I think about 40 years ago it was typical that all ambulances had one sound and firetrucks another but there are no such themes nowadays. As for the color scheme of ambulances and firetrucks: they typically use reflector tape (all the white/grey looking stuff is reflector material which reflects maybe 80–90% of the incoming light directly back. Nowadays ambulances are mostly yellow and firetrucks are mostly orange. Police cars are always mostly white with dark blue/nearly black thick stripes. All emergency vehicles use blue signal lights and any blue lights in civilian vehicles are strictly forbidden (blinking or static). The blue lights are always used if the emergency vehicles do not follow the usual traffic rules but the siren is used by the decision of the driver only. If it's deemed unnecessary for safety, they will switch it off not to cause extra noise.
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  30. 2:12 One interesting thing with F1 pit stops is that teams try to keep the exact lap secret. As a result, all the crew must be pretending to sipping coffee and chit-chatting immediately before the car is taken in. And that pit team is actually made out of the team members that usually do other stuff. Even F1 teams are not so wasteful that they would have separate pit crew that does nothing else!
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  31. I think you should have also tasted Swedish "Marabou Mjölkchoklad" chocolate or Finnish "Fazer Blue" chocolate, too.
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  32. American Fanta seems like the stuff that would actually still exist 200 years after a nuclear war because there's nothing organic in that bottle. Total Fallout universe feel.
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  33.  @marian-gabriel9518  Great description of the full system! I would have just said that brake migration is kind of preprogrammed change to brake balance after initial heavy breaking in the corner. For a broad picture it doesn't matter how the car is braking/slowing down but the brake migration is about changing the balance of that deceleration to keep suitable balance through the corner. (And drivers adjust it on the fly because they prefer more oversteer or understeer for different corners and the track conditions change all the time.)
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  34. The truck slowing down to 20 km/h despite having 730 hp engine is pretty insane!
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  35. 11:40 I think they wanted to line up the truck part, too, not just the trailer and that's why he needed to "do it twice".
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  36. The competition for rally games is Richard Burns Rally + lots of mods on PC (commonly known as "RBR"), DiRT Rally 2.0 and WRC 10. I'd skip the older versions of WRC. The RBR is the most realistic and DiRT 2.0 and WRC 10 are about equal, both having minor pros and cons.
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  37. 7:20 Skilled Pesäpallo-pitcher can throw the ball with a spin so it doesn't drop straight but still hits the plate!
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  38. I think you should also compare US Coca Cola vs European Coca Cola. The US version has crap such as corn suryp that the European version doesn't have.
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  39.  @etiosooopse5618  Here's the link: Finnish Rally Crashes 2011-2017 https://youtu.be/rW8rsiPix9U
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  40. 21:10 I guess Germany just has police that actually catches criminals. If everybody pumping gas without paying is caught, pretty soon nobody pumps gas without poaying. On the other hand, if police does nothing, nobody is paying for gas if they can pump and run away.
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  41. I've been using pretty old cars for my whole life (inherited trait from my father) and diesel cars are definitely more reliable than any gasoline cars. There are two big reasons for improved reliability: (1) diesel engine has very high compression so the engine is built really strong, and (2) diesel is a lubricant unlike gasoline which is a solvent. As a result, diesel engine parts that interact with fuel are constantly lubricated and wear very little when used. Basically if you use correct oil, follow the official oil change interval and replace the timing belt according to the official maintenance schedule, diesel engine should last at least 200k miles without any major repairs or restoration.
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  42. One interesting thing to consider is that all cars that cannot get within 107 % of the F1 pole position will be disqualified from F1 race. IndyCar would be disqualified immediately for being too slow so it's totally different class indeed.
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  43. I think average speed cameras are good because there's no way for you to benefit from speeding. Regular speed cameras are just too simple to avoid and allow getting to the destination faster so that gives incentive for speeding. If you know there will be average speed cameras everywhere, you know that you have to drive according to the rules. Once everybody follows the traffic rules, you can then increase the official speed limits to maximum safe value without having to wonder how much faster people are going to drive in reality.
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  44. The crash was so bad and the fire was so huge that many of the fire marshals weren't brave enough to go close the fire immediately after the crash!
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  45.  @xiro6  Diesel engines never needed lead because the diesel fuel is a lubricant itself. Older diesel engines didn't use direct injection because the injectors were not good enough to use in passanger cars. All modern diesel engines use direct injection and most also have a turbo. During the 1980's turbo was still too fragile to put in passager diesel car. Basically the first great turbo diesel engines with direct injection were made around 1995 by Audi (the TDI engine).
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  46. Here's a cab over truck in Finland with 104 metric tons (77 metric tons of wood in the load and the total length is 33 m): https://youtu.be/NrASEeaOmDI (Unfortunately that clip doesn't have subtitles and audio only in Finnish.)
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  47. And here's how you turn the truck in small space: https://youtu.be/FKYvA3-8uXA
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  48. 8:53 I would argue that you shouldn't be doing those things in a car with automatic transmission either if you're driving the car.
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  49. Great job on knowing European countries! Americans are not typically known for excelling in world geography.
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  50. 5:17 Hitting straight over the rear limit is foul but if you make it bounce from the ground, it can go however far and it's an allowed run. The hard part is to hit the ball so fast into ground that nobody can catch it.
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